Dr Marcel Petiot - Wartime Serial Killer,

[sunbury2]

How do you find a madman in a world gone mad? With killings rife and the Gestapo making people disappear all the time, it was the perfect hunting grounds for a serial killer.

Dr. Marcel Petiot was a deadly serial killer, he preyed upon refugees, often Jewish who were trying to flee German Occupied France. He would take them to his home and poison them by injection, he told his trusting victims the needle was to "inoculate" them against diseases. Once injected, he would lock them in a sound proof room, which from a peep hole, he would watch them die. Afterwards he would either bury the bodies in the basement or burn them in his furnace.

He kept their money and possessions. At his arrest, he was found with 1500 hundred items of clothing and 47 suitcases belonging to his victims.

In March 1944, neighbours complained of thick black smoke from his chimney. The Fire Brigade arrived and found the remains of 47 people in his house. Petiot was cunning, he told them they were the bodies of German Soldiers and Collaborators that he was disposing of on behalf of the Resistance.

Such were the times, he was allowed to go free. In November 1944 after the liberation of France, he was investigated and arrested for murder. He was convicted for 27 murders but it is believed between 1941 and 1944, he murdered 63 people.

He was guillotined on May 26th, 1946.

[cambri]

There is a fairly decent and memorable film on this subject:

[Eddy Marz]

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Petiot at his trial (1946)

Crim._Petiot_guillotine.jpg (43.37 KiB) Viewed 12805 times

And his execution

[Lynn R]

In June 2012 a new book, Death in the City of Light by David King, was released about Dr. Petiot and his crimes. The first description of what the police found turned my stomach as much as anything I've ever heard.

The author draws a picture of Petiot playing different parties off against one another. When it was convenient he claimed to be resistance. Other times he seemed in concert with the Gestapo. The author hypothesizes that Petiot was in cahoots with an organized crime gang which the Gestapo allowed to function, and occasionally employed to do their bidding, as long as the Gestapo received their share of the profits. In the author's epilogue Petiot's property, with it's odd little room and a gas mask found nearby, are presented (admittedly speculatively) as Petiot's own experimental gas chamber, in use by 1942. This presentation is based on an account of the only person known to have survived one of Petiot's apparent attempts.

[cambri]

The lowest of the low.

A 'tricky bastard' and an 'extravagantly rotten human being':

[steverodgers801]

similar to Kaminski who was so crazy he scared the Germans

[Vikki]

I have David King's book too, and I was surprised by how little at all the Germans had to do with the case, at least in King's account. That stood out quite strongly to me, considering how much interest and control the Germans had in most every other aspect of French life.

Petiot even claimed to have killed a couple of members of the Bonny-LaFont gang, the "French Gestapo" operating in Paris at the time.

~Vikki

[Stanford9]

I’m amazed that he ever managed to become a Dr. He was suspected of being unhinged at medical school. I suppose his getting away with it for so long might have had something to do with automatic respect for the medical profession? After all Dr Harold Shipman, Dr John Bodkin Adams, nurse Beverley Gail Allitt, ”Dr.” Henry Howard Holmes, Dr. Joseph Swango, pathologist Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian, nurse Daniela Poggiali, Dr. Shiro Ishii, Dr. Robert G. Clements, Dr. Mario Jascalevich (Dr. X), Dr. Anders Hansson, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, Hospital orderly Donald Harvey, err... One could go on and on. They all got away with mass murder over extender periods of time - and we haven’t even got to Dr. Josef Mengele or Dr. August Hirt.
I think the lesson has to be never visit a Dr. Alone!